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I'm Paul Wheaton. I was linked to earlier and then talked about .... apparently I took a class a looong time ago with somebody's wife!

And, as it turns out, I might make the top ten list of rocket mass heater experts. I have about 20 youtube videos, a big article and 8 DVDs on the topic.

Ernie and Erica have a new book out on the topic called "The Rocket Mass Heater Builder's Guide." Excellent book. My name is peppered through it. The flagship demo build is at my place.

Now .... to the roots of my post ....

Yes! Ooodles of people have put these in yurts! And, if your yurt is build on a platform, as most of them are, then you will need to shore up the floor before building the rocket mass heater. Although I do have a great thread about a yurt build where the rocket mass heater was actually UNDER the yurt. Interesting design. So the floor ended up being heated. I would post a link, but the rules of this forum says that would be naughty.

But .... here is the most important thing I wanna share right now ... we put one in a tipi. Uninsulated. Bam!

The thing is that a rocket mass heater is super duper efficient for a lot of reasons, but a big part of that is that it does all sorts of stuff in a very different way. And we wanted to PROVE that by putting a rocket mass heater in an obviously uninsulated structure.

And we have a couple living in the tipi in montana. And one night it gets down to 26 below. The couple gets up in the morning ... and y'all need to note that the fire has been out for eight hours ... they don't know how bitter cold it is outside. They take off their night clothes and put on their day clothes and .... right there, that's the most important part. Apparently, when they changed they felt like the temperature in the tipi was a little over 50.

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Another thing that was mentioned was youtube videos. There are hundreds. Maybe thousands. I think I put up the first. And I now have about 20 up there. But there are lots of problems - people are building freakshows of flaming death and calling them rocket mass heaters. So it is really tough to figure out what is the best path.

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Most rocket mass heaters are built in a couple of days. Really fancy ones can take a week or more. And the new pebble style stuff is super fast.

I lived in Farrand hall on the CU Boulder campus back in 72-72. It was a very old building even back then. Steam boiler radiator in every dorm room. Lemme tell yuh that sucker was niiice and warm. Those old radiators are cast iron. They weigh a couple hundred pounds-each- and of course that is why they deliver nice even warmth. I worked on an old house a few years ago that had all the cast radiators pulled to have lead paint removed. It took a crew to do it. Mass really is key to a superb